Kiku - my submission for 10k Apart 2016 ======================================= By George Mandis https://george.mand.is/2016/10/kiku-my-submission-for-10k-apart-2016 Thursday, October 6th 2016 This past month I collaborated with [Benjamin Thomas](http://bentomas.com) on a submission for [10k Apart](https://a-k-apart.com). I’m pleased with how it turned out and am happy to present to you [Kiku](https://a-k-apart.com/gallery/Kiku). [![Kiku Card Game](https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/george.mand.is/Kiku.png)](https://a-k-apart.com/gallery/Kiku) Kiku is basically an online adaptation of [Hanabi](http://amzn.to/2dyv6w3) under a different name and theme. In the original game you’re trying to cooperate with your partner to figuratively launch different-colored fireworks. In Kiku you’re figuratively trying to establish contact with aliens on the other side of the galaxy. When Ben and I met to discuss what we could collaborate on we had two ideas: a website that explains an something in a fun presentation or a game. He introduced me to Hanabi and said he’d wanted to try to create a web-version anyway. I suggested — vaguely — we could do an interactive presentation surrounding the [SETI signal](http://www.seti.org/seti-institute/a-seti-signal) that had just been discovered that week. We decided to combine the two. The premise of the [10k Apart](https://a-k-apart.com) project is to present a compelling web experience that loads everything it needs in less than 10 kilobytes and works without JavaScript. This presented quite a challenge in making a turn-based game, but we came up with a form-based solution that actually degrades surprisingly well in a JavaScript-less environment — although that has become exceedingly rare in the web-world, but still. The contest is near and dear to my heart in many ways. In [my work](https://snaptortoise.com) I often inherit existing projects and groan a little when I look at the size of the page loads. I’ve even been poked fun at for having a possibly unhealthy obsession with reducing latency, page requests, size and load time… But I think people forget these things really matter a lot when people talk about design and user experience — a lot more than some flashy video header that produces oohs and aahs but provide little in the way of information. I honestly feel like the web could be 90% text some days… but I’m digressing and hijacking this blog post to be about something else now. I suggest reading this: [The Web Obesity Crisis](http://idlewords.com/talks/website_obesity.htm). If you’re already familiar with [Hanabi](http://amzn.to/2dyv6w3) you should be able to more or less figure out how to [play Kiku](http://amzn.to/2dyv6w3) pretty quickly, I hope. If not, I suggest [reading up on the rules](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/98778/hanabi) and then heading over to give it a shot. My personal best score so far is 19, which I’ve achieved twice. I’ll give you two tips: - The aliens are *very* aggressive about discarding cards it knows it does not need from a probabilistic standpoint. - That aliens will generally discard the left-most card in their hand when forced to discard a completely unknown card. Finally, if you like it, I’d [very much appreciate your vote](https://a-k-apart.com/gallery/Kiku) for Ben and I’s 10k Apart project. And if you’re interested in the source-code you can find it here: [github.com/btgm/kiku](https://github.com/btgm/kiku) The current source actually has some improvements that didn’t make it into the submitted version, unfortunately. You can play the updated version here to compare: [kiku.azurewebsites.net](http://kiku.azurewebsites.net)